WINGS POST-GAME: Blue (Jackets) Out of the Water

The second-half of a back-to-back has the Red Wings face a Columbus Blue Jackets team facing the same fatigue dilemma.

This was a game that showed the weaknesses of this team and truly brought back to earth the expectations for the upcoming seasons.

The Wings are not going to be a winning team for a while and we need to simply accept it. Unless some lottery balls go our way next month.

I’m so sad after watching this game.

THE RUNDOWN

The fatigue was very evident right off the faceoff in the 1st. Poorly placed passes were intercepted and key scoring chances were then created for both teams.

Russian Fountain of Youth, Evgeny Svechnikov drew his first penalty of the season after getting tripped up by Ryan “Drafted Before Lindholm, Rielly and Trouba” Murray’s stick. (Un)fortunately a poorly played powerplay led to a shorthanded goal by Matt Calvert.

Seconds later, Darren Helm tied it up off a weird rebound/bounce from a Luke Witkowski shot – a very lucky goal for this Red Wings team.

The Wings get another powerplay, but of course that doesn’t matter and this team is now has only scored 4 powerplay goals on a total of 28 powerplay opportunities in their last 10 games – heading into the second period now.

The Wings came out struggling after the first intermission and they were punished for it.

A sneaky change by Columbus and they were suddenly on an even-strength 2-on-1. Seth Jones received the pass and absolutely slapped the shit out of it to put it behind Jared Coreau.

Panarin has 14 points in the last 10 games with that assist – I am eternally jealous.

Just a few minutes after, a poorly positions Abdelkader tried to make a play to keep the offensive zone pressure alive. But unfortunately for him, that led to an odd-man rush headed the other way. You could guess what happened next.

Seth “Better than Bobby Orr” Jones scored off the rush – with Coreau out of position after the initial save on a Thomas Vanek one-timer.

After 40, the team has become even more painful to watch. Just lose interest until the Draft Lottery.

The Wings are down 24-16 in shots on goal, if you still care.

This game felt like the final nail in the coffin of the season, and they still have 14 games to play.

Panarin entered the zone and took a shot with 14:28 remaining. THREE MINUTES, three shots and four blocked attempts later, Detroit finally gets the puck out #icing#setupcamp#CBJ

The whole third period can be summed up into this one tweet. The Wings just simply did not have the legs to make any scoring plays and it was Columbus all the way.

Except of course when Detroit’s Greek Freak, Andreas Athanasiou scores after a rare odd-man rush for Detroit. Perfectly played by Abdelkader – laying off the puck to a speeding AA.

Even with the late goal and empty net chances, the Wings lose this one 3-2 and were outshot 36-23.

This was not a great look by this team.

THE STATS

It is so clear where everything went wrong for the Wings. It seems like after the third Blue Jackets goal they just gave up and threw in every single towel they could find. That line is embarrassingly flat for a team down by two goals with still 15 minutes to play in a hockey game. If there is some supposed winning culture that this team should have, then why was this game played this way.

MOTOR CITY MVP

You know what? It’s Danny DeKeyser and I don’t want to hear any arguments about it.

The simple fact that he had a team-leading 5v5 CF% of 57.14 and started 84.3% of his shifts in the DEFENSIVE zone. Not a terrible game from the man with a terrible contract.

Congrats on the kid, I guess.

NEXT UP

The Wings are heading to California next week for a nice little vacation road-trip – starting on Monday night against the San Jose Sharks at the SAP Center. Puck drop is at 10:30pm EST and you will be able to watch it on Fox Sports Detroit.

As always, Brock Seguin and the WN team will have the pre-game post to get you prepped and ready to see too aging teams battle it out.